The strict “separation of church and state” (in fact separation of religion and the state) decreed by the Supreme Court in its 1947 Everson vs. the Board of Education decision, made real to the public by later decisions ending public school prayer and Bible reading (1962 and 1963), prohibiting display of the Ten Commandments (1980), and successive decisions defining Christian sexual morality as oppressive and excluded from law, have left Christians not only despairing of any hope of recovering American culture for Christ, but unable even to defend the freedom to live their lives in obedience to God’s commands. “Winning back the culture” may seem like a hopeless project, at a time when even the Christian life of individuals, religious schools, hospitals, charities, and churches is threatened.
But this despair ignores Christians’ own critique of secularism as deleterious to life. R.R. Reno, editor of First Things magazine, discussed how the inadequacy of secularism may result in an opening for Christians to recover the culture in the future at a presentation at the Heritage Foundation on September 29. Central to his argument, made in his new book, Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society, is the claim that the personal freedom that secular liberalism attempts to give, both freedom from material want and freedom from social constraint, cannot produce any desirable culture. Society needs both solidarity and freedom. Culture, he said, is “basic to politics,” and religion is “basic to culture.”
The post-Enlightenment West sought new “gods” to replace the Christian God and his revelation. These were the “strong gods of ideology” (Marxism and Nazism) that came to be dominant in the twentieth century, and which precipitated the world wars. In reaction against these totalizing movements and the oppression and carnage they produced, western society has come to favor individualism. The “current consensus” is not best described as “relativism,” Reno said, but “nonjudgmentalism.” Despite its emphasis on avoiding condemnation and punishment, it is nonetheless “quite punitive” if it is violated. Advocates of nonjudgmentalism maintain that it will promote freedom and peace. The spiritual values that any metanarrative would stress are not there, but it is claimed that if there is nothing worth sacrificing for, then no one will sacrifice themselves or anyone else. In a nonjudgmental society, patriotism is embarrassing.
Yet there are still values in such a society. Instead of no gods, the contemporary world has the “weak gods” of “health, wealth, and pleasure.” The result is a “velvet totalitarianism of the empire of utility,” and there is “less and less freedom.” Instead, “health” becomes a controlling idea. Reno believes that this post-war utilitarianism is, however, drawing to a close. In this environment of strong individualism, “even successful people feel anxious and ill at ease about the future,” he maintained, and there is no “stable place to stand.” The new nationalism seen in both Europe and America is a call for the return of strong gods. It might be added that the totalitarianism of the strong gods is essentially an attempt to make non-transcendently based ideas serve to cover all of life; a transcendent source is, as Reno pointed out, necessary to hold totalitarianism in check. American society may have some advantage over European societies, since in America, a stronger Christianity is the check on the strong gods.
A questioner asked if multiculturalism is nothing more than “Western civilization bashing.” Reno responded that America is the “universal nation,” and that paradoxically, the anti-westernism of the political and cultural left now feeds American imperialism, as the American and other Western government now seek to export their nonjudgmental “empire of utility” to the non-Western world. He predicted that the European Court of Human Rights will at some time in the future rule a national election to be invalid because it is “xenophobic,” perhaps, it might be added, in the same vein that the U.S. Supreme Court has voided laws supporting traditional morality as being based on “animus.”
Reno said that the attraction of the “empire of utility” is that it promises a world which is “rational and therefore post-political.” This has manifested itself in different ways on the right and on the left. The political left has believed in the “withering away” of the state, followed by a perfect society in which the right course of action will be evident, and willed, by all. The political right has maintained that the free market will take away conflict. “Neither of those two utopianisms work.” The result is a “technocratic pragmatism” that makes up policy “as it goes along.” The meritocracy that rules the academy, politics and the economy now uses “enhanced morality,” justifying moral admonitions in terms of their utility. This, he said, empowers the meritocracy. A justification of morality in terms of utility, instead of simple moral precepts, results in a “therapeutic culture” which empowers the verbal capacity of the meritocracy. This culture “ends up ripping the guard rails off of life” for ordinary people. The idea that contemporary progressivism favors “the weak and the vulnerable” is thus “absurd.”
Not surprisingly, “the public is rebelling against the empire of utility,” because people want “something higher.” The “nation is returning as the vessel of this hope.” Reno proposed that moral traditionalists should make natural law arguments in contemporary society (which, he said, would be the most truly revolutionary move). Natural law arguments are about “what is the case, not about what promotes the greatest good for the greatest number.” He maintained that an advantage for traditionalists in this struggle is that the “progressive project is making war against the possibility of …decent, dignified lives” for ordinary people. This is to be expected, since a merely instrumental reason can only provide means, not the point of life. Old social forms that once helped give life meaning are now “dissolving,” replaced by “passing desires,” and “fickle impulses.” In such a utilitarian society, there is “a lack of opportunity to love and honor other people.” Alarmingly, then, the “basic cultural conditions for democracy are dissolving in America”. Paradoxically (at least from a utilitarian viewpoint) “people need the loyalties that allow them to be free.” This means that there must be moral commitments beyond utility for “health, wealth, and pleasure.”
But to reject utilitarianism, there must be prophetic voices declaring what society and individuals should be striving for. Where do prophetic voices come from? Reno claimed that contemporary society needs a “loving intellect,” rather than the “critical intellect” favored by the academy. He held that “religious faith is the most powerful force in human history.” The “Christian society” we should seek should be “leavened by Christians,” but not “dominated by Christians.” Yet a “Christian America” is not the ultimate goal. The United States of America will someday no longer exist, he said, but the Christian Church will continue to eternity.
No comments yet
